Obsidian CEO Chronicles Fallout New Vegas Development in New Interview

Eurogamer recently posted a new interview with Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart. In it, Urquhart discussed the various changes Fallout: New Vegas went through in its development process.

“Originally we had this idea where the player would be able to choose between three races: human, ghoul and super mutant,” said Urquhart. “It really had to do with how all the weapons and armour worked. Trying to have them all work with ghouls and super mutants was just going to be – [Bethesda] felt like it was going to be a nightmare. It wasn’t like they said no but it was a very strongly worded, ‘We would really suggest that you not try to do that.’”

Obsidian and Bethesda both started talking about a possibly new Fallout game in 2008, and seemed to know from the start that it wouldn’t be an entirely new thing. “We knew from the start it was not going to be Fallout 4 – that was the internal team’s.” “It was always intended to be essentially a gigantic expansion,” said Obsidian co-owner Chris Parker.

For a bit, Obsidian considered the game to be more like Grand Theft Auto: Vice City or San Andreas, which were essentially offshoots of Grand Theft Auto 3 despite being full games. “It was meant to be not the sequel,” said Urquhart. “It was meant to be an offshoot project. But we were actually worried about that, about people thinking of it as just a big expansion.”

The entire interview is certainly worth the read, and goes a bit more in depth as to how New Reno was chosen for the location of the game and what was it like as the development team slowly figured out the ideas for what the game would have. It’s a nice piece of history on a game that many consider to be one of the strongest titles in the Fallout series.